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26 Jun 2025 How “Trump Accounts” Might Work, And Are They Any Good?

Posted at 13:01h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the G.O.P. tax bill that had recently cleared the House. It contained a provision scheduled to go into effect in 2026 that would create what are called "Trump Accounts" (The House bill called them "MAGA Accounts," but the...

22 May 2025 The G.O.P. Tax Bill: What We Know So Far

Posted at 12:40h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

The G.O.P. has put forth the framework of a tax bill designed to extend the tax cuts President Trump enacted during his first term. The Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA), passed in November of 2017, was a significant restructuring of the tax code: standard...

10 Apr 2025 Uncertainty, Optimism, and Pausing Tariffs

Posted at 13:30h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

On December 31st, 2024, Karen Langley wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal titled, "Stocks Cap Best Two Years in a Quarter Century," which feels like it could have been written a quarter century ago. As I start to write this (it's Wednesday morning),...

06 Mar 2025 What’s the ROI of Working With a Financial Advisor?

Posted at 07:05h in The Friday Brief by Ryan Smith, CFP®, RICP®, CTS™, MSFP

Over the years, there have been a few attempts to quantify the value of working with a financial advisor. Clearly, not an easy task. Clients are different, financial advisors are different. That variability makes measurement difficult. In 2001, Vanguard published a paper titled Vanguard's Advisor...